Google's New Group Messaging App Is Like Pinterest & Hangouts in One

Google is launching a new app called Spaces that lets you share things from the web with small groups of people. The aim of Spaces appears to be granting you a forum with like-minded people to help cut down on off-topic comments that can steer a conversation off the rails.

Spaces comes with Google Search, Chrome, and YouTube built in, so you won't need to switch apps to go hunting for interesting content to share. You can invite people to your groups—or "spaces" as they're called in the app—by email, other social media sites, or messages, so your invitees won't need a dedicated Spaces account to join the discussion. This should help to lure users who are wary of signing up for yet another social media account.

At the same time, Spaces doesn't appear to be much more than another social media app in a marketplace that's already pretty crowded. Having Google Search, YouTube, and Chrome built in is handy, but it's probably not enough to instantly lure people away from Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and the like. The promise of on-topic conversations is nice, but I really don't know how Google will follow through on that promise, considering that, more often than not, the internet is a place where good and interesting conversations go to die.

If by some miracle your conversation doesn't go spinning out of control, there's a search bar so that you can quickly look up old comments, images, and links in your conversations.

Spaces hasn't been launched as of yet, but it should be available sometime today, May 16th. Google says they'll be experimenting with the app during I/O 2016 later this week, and that they'll be creating a space for each session. Apparently there are also a few "surprises" in store for attendees to the event, so I guess we'll have to wait and see what those are.

Are you intrigued about Spaces? Indifferent? Let us know in the comments.